


The Ghastly Kitchen

by sakuuya



Category: Battle for London in the Air (Roleplay)
Genre: Cannibalism, Dr. J is referred to exclusively by his first name, F/M, Inter-season, Murder, Partially-described torture, Serial Killers, director's cut, the puns are intentional today
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:40:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25830730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sakuuya/pseuds/sakuuya
Summary: Celine Jhandir decides it would be interesting to eat human flesh. Her husband needs some convincing.
Relationships: Dr. Anil Jhandir & Celine Abinall
Kudos: 5
Collections: Battle for London-in-the-Air Canon





	The Ghastly Kitchen

Celine looked down at the woman on the operating table and asked, "Have you ever wondered what a human tastes like?"

"Never." Anil punctuated his curt reply with another snap of his rib-cutters, not even looking up from his work. Their victim barely made a sound; she must have been going into shock. Her muscles, where they were exposed, glistened like an expensive roast, dark and well-marbled with fat.

"They say it tastes like pork, but it looks so much more like beef, don't you think?"

"I've never thought about it at all," he said, in a tone of voice that indicated he wasn't intending to start any time soon.

But Celine couldn't help needling a bit: "You've really never been even a little curious?"

"Celine, that's _disgusting_ ," Anil snapped, final as a severed rib.

"Fine, fine." She held up her bloody hands in a gesture of surrender. "Forget I ever mentioned it."

Anil may or may not have forgotten, but Celine certainly didn't. If she couldn’t try the real thing, at least she could read other people’s accounts. She wasn’t starting out from a place of ignorance—when one studied the subjects she did, there was no avoiding the occasional tale of cannibalism. But while she, hah, devoured those stories when she came across them, somehow, she’d never made a serious stab at more comprehensive research.

Their home library reflected Celine’s experience: Plenty of references to cannibalism, but few detailed accounts. Besides, she had read most of it already. That necessitated spending some time at a public library. 

The Putnam Library was an imposing neoclassical building, as old as MITA itself. It was due for decommission and demolition once the city finished construction on a huge new public library. That was years away yet—civic construction here was always fraught with complication and corruption; most everyone took it as a normal part of city life—but there was still something sepulchral about the Putnam building. Walking through the doomed library, Celine imagined she could feel some echo of all the scholars who’d tread there before her, like ghosts haunting an old house. She visited as often as she could find a reason to, and in particular, it seemed the perfect place to research cannibalism.

She probably could have found what she was looking for herself in the library’s beautiful open shelves, but she liked the figure she presented, a lady dressed in mourning asking a librarian for books on eating people. From the look on his face, it wasn’t a question he heard often, but the expression was only surprise, not disgust. 

There wasn’t a specific section on cannibalism, of course—the librarian pulled books from a variety of shelves and rebuffed Celine’s offer to help carry the increasingly-precarious stack around the library.

When he finally set their haul down on a desk, he asked, a little out of breath, “Are you open to novels and stuff like that?”

“Sure! I’m looking for reference material, really, but you never know! I’ll take anything you recommend.”

“I’ll have to send a radio over to Hayden Library, where we keep most of our fiction collection—geez, I can’t wait until we have a bigger building—but I’ll start making a list. Oh, and, uh, we don’t collect pulp mags at all, but if you can track down the latest issue of _Thrilling Stories_ , it has a neat little cannibal story in it.” He looked a bit embarrassed at having given such a low-class recommendation, but he shouldn’t have.

“Oh, ‘The Confessional’ by G. L. Whitcomb?” Celine enthused, shuddering theatrically. “I loved it! Absolutely skin-crawling!”

“Whitcomb’s one of my favorites. He’s supposedly working on a novel, you know.”

“Really? Gosh, I’d love to read that!” Celine didn’t correct the librarian as to Grace’s sex, nor mention their connection—nor, for that matter, what she knew about Grace’s forthcoming novel. She knew her friend preferred to keep her private life private. “If you’re a fan of Whitcomb’s, I’m sure whatever other novels you recommend will be of great interest.”

“I’ll get in touch with Haydyn—best of luck with your research!”

The librarian had found a surprising amount of relevant books, enough to necessitate several more trips, plus a couple to pick up the recommended novels as they arrived, and one to learn about hog butchering.

Celine wasn’t surprised to find that her interest in tasting human flesh only grew stronger the more she read about it. The historical remove of the old accounts, the inconsistencies between them, and even the lurid unreality of the novels just made her more eager to experience it herself. This always happened when she really sunk her teeth into a new idea.

The trouble was that when she fixated on some new thing, Anil was usually supportive, happy to skip down the path of depravity beside her—not that he ever skipped in reality, but it was a fun mental image. And then when she brought up cannibalism, he’d been so dismissive—why? Celine could understand how a person might have a moral aversion to consuming human flesh, just not _Anil_ , who had done worse and enjoyed it.

Celine could have just tried human meat on her own. She and Anil had a standing rule against solo kills, but she could spirit some flesh away from their next victim. Even if Anil was disgusted or scornful, she doubted he would stop her. 

It simply wouldn't feel right somehow, absurd as it was to use that word. Surely Anil could be made to see her position. She added a couple books on rhetoric and argument to her reading list.

Celine waited to broach the subject until they started to plan their next kill. Anil was enthusing about opening up the next victim’s chest again, the plans he had to delay the onset of shock so he’d have more time with the internal organs while the victim was still aware of what was happening. It was very like him, to be concerned with procedural minutia this far out from the actual event. Celine usually found it endearing, but today she was barely listening.

Anil must have noticed, because he said, “Ah, but I’ve been rambling. If there’s anything you’re particularly eager to try, I’ll defer to you. I could use more time to pin down my methodology.”

Celine took a deep breath. “I want to eat them. Part of them, anyway. Just to try it.”

“I thought we talked about this already,” Anil said, looking surprised.

“No, not really. I brought it up, and you said no. And I admit that it was poor timing on my part—this isn’t something I should have sprung on you in the moment. So I let the matter drop. But now that we have a little more distance, I think you should reconsider.”

“I’m not sure what else there is to discuss. Cannibalism is disgusting. That’s the long and short of it. You’ve seen what’s inside people’s bodies. Do you really want to eat that?”

“Well, sure, you and I have a lot more experience than the average person when it comes to what human bodies are like. But I don’t really know—and I bet you don’t either—what’s inside of a cow or a chicken. And even with the Meat Inspection Act a few years ago, do you really think MITA’s slaughterhouses are hygienic? _This_ city? If anything, eating meat from someone we kill will be _less_ disgusting, because we’ll be able to see that they’re healthy rather than relying on some corrupt inspector. It’s like a farmer and eating his own livestock.”

“That’s not… quite what I meant—although it is why I prefer we buy from halal butchers. My issue is more—”

“A moral disgust?” Celine interrupted, and then mentally kicked herself for it. Putting words in Anil’s mouth was no way to persuade him. Dammit, she’d thought so hard about possible responses, and then she had to go and make such an impetuous unforced error!

And indeed, Anil’s eyes narrowed as he responded. “Don’t be absurd.”

“Sorry. It’s just—do you remember how guilty I felt, the first few times I killed someone? That wasn’t a rational response. I was getting in the way of my own happiness, but more than that, I was feeling how I thought I _ought_ to feel. I was grappling with social mores as much as anything, and whether I was willing to fully put myself outside them. I think your feelings on cannibalism might be coming from a similar place.”

“I’ll grant that people tend to react based on social mores without realizing they’re doing so, but you’re missing a crucial distinction: I’m not holding back from something I want to do.”

“I know. But at worst, you should be neutral. There’s no logical basis to be disgusted, absent some kind of moral framework. And besides, how many times have you told me that a dead body is ‘just meat’ when mutilating it post-mortem?”

Anil stared at her, frowning; Celine tried to guess what argument he was formulating and how she might counter it. But when he finally opened his mouth, what he said was, “You make a strong argument. I can’t promise I’ll be enthusiastic, but I think you may be right that my feelings aren’t rational. I insist we cook the meat, though. I won’t eat raw meat, regardless of the source.”

“Oh, don’t worry!” Celine reassured him, suddenly full of energy now that she didn’t have a debate hanging over her head. “I was planning on cooking them! Didn’t I say? Actually, I have a few ideas about that already! Let me grab a book—I’d appreciate your anatomical expertise.”

It took them longer than usual to select a victim. Anil insisted on choosing someone whose medical history he could get hold of. That wasn’t to say that he was dragging his feet—Celine could tell that, having decided that he should be comfortable with cannibalism, he was forcing himself to do so. If anything, he was pushing forward faster than he otherwise might, to show willing.

Still, their first choice didn’t pan out once Anil got a look at her hospital records, which added a further delay. After their initial planning session, Anil didn't bring up the cannibalistic aspect again. Celine followed his lead, cognizant of how difficult it must be for him, but the time and silence made her anticipation increasingly difficult to bear.

She tried to keep a lid on it by sketching predatory animals tearing apart human corpses. Such scenes had more visual interest than cannibalism, and besides, her animal anatomy could use the practice. The sketches were good, she thought, might even be worth turning into paintings sometime, but they didn't do much to quell her impatience. 

When the night finally— _finally_ —came to take their victim (a man who gambled to excess but didn't smoke or take laudanum) it was simply a matter of Celine acting coquettish at one of his usual haunts until she could convince him to follow her into the alley behind the bar, where Anil coshed him on the head. Anil preferred to use his paralytic, which was more precise than a blow to the noodle, but Celine had nixed it. Who knew if a chemical like that would change the flavor of the flesh?

The other nice thing about knocking a man out the old-fashioned way was that Anil's paralytic always lasted for at least an hour. When their victim was simply unconscious, they were able to get to work quicker, which suited Celine's impatience just fine.

To get the best look at their victim’s muscle tissue, they dismembered him a few inches at a time. Anil took on the bulk of the work with a scalpel and bone saw; Celine followed with an old-fashioned steam-powered cauterizer to stop the man from bleeding out too quickly. The cauterizer made the air in their secret room smell like singed flesh, a smell that Celine usually found unpleasant. Today, her mouth watered a little in anticipation, though it was more of a burning smell than a cooking one. She felt like she might come untethered from the ground at any moment and float up to the ceiling in her excitement. As for Anil, if his unease with cannibalism was causing him any distress, he didn’t show it. He was as brilliant as ever in his cruel joy as he sliced and chopped at their victim’s flesh.

Being a surgeon, he reminded her, was not the same thing as being a butcher. Even being a killer hundreds of times over didn’t give him experience preparing meat for consumption. But they came out of the basement with a few presentable-looking cuts from the now-dead man’s chest, shoulder, and lower back.

Anil did most of the cooking when their cook had her day off (and of course, they chose such a day for this particular murder). He had very particular opinions about food preparation, whereas Celine was content to try just about anything. But Anil's recipes usually involved covering meat in some kind of curry, and Celine didn't want any strong flavors masking the taste of the flesh today. So she just tied the chest meat like a roast and cooked it in a roasting pan with some carrots and onions. The rest of the meat they wrapped in butcher paper and stored in their mechanical icebox, labeled as beef.

Anil still insisted on making a tomato chutney as an accompaniment, and Celine let him. She couldn't force him to experience human flesh in the optimal way.

They say down to dinner like they would at any other night, but Celine could feel a certain _frisson_ in the air, as if they were somehow killing the man again. She wondered if Anil could feel it too. Either way, she could tell he was waiting for her to take the first bite.

"Oh!" was all she could say when the flavor hit her tongue. For someone who hadn't cooked much lately, she'd sure done a good job with this man. "It really does taste like pork, even though it's so dark. Don't you think?"

"I couldn't say," Anil said, spooning more chutney onto his own portion. "I don't eat pork very often." 

He didn't sound enthusiastic, but he didn't stop eating it either. To watch him, this could have been any other dinner. It was baffling. But the strangeness of Anil's reaction couldn't dampen Celine's enthusiasm. 

It wasn't even the taste (which really was akin to good roast pork) as much as the knowledge that they'd ascended into the rarified circle of people who'd tasted human flesh. As an experience, it was everything Celine had hoped it would be.

"You know," she mused at one point, "If we did this more often, we could really save some money at the butcher's."

"Celine, we can afford meat. But… If you feel the need to cannibalize anyone else, I won't kick up a fuss. It is just meat, when one gets over oneself."

"We'll see. I'm not sure it'd be as exciting the second time, you know? New experiences are always the best experiences."

"If you say so," Anil replied, but he sounded fond.


End file.
